Kamala Markandaya

The inspirational civil rights activist Marcus Garvey once stated that, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without its roots.” Garvey’s words perfectly describe the themes of cultural loss and family conflict that appear in the novels The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan and Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya. Both of these novels use a fictional story inspired by the author 's life to analyze the larger issue and theme of cultural loss. In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan writes sixteen vignettes about the four Chinese mother-daughter families that struggle with the cultural and generational gap that arises between first generation immigrant mothers and their contrasting Americanized daughters.

In both novels the children fail to grasp their parents point of view and vice versa. In The Joy Luck Club the points of view of the Chinese speaking parents and their English speaking children are severely limited by the language barrier that exists between them. Jing-mei one of the daughters in The Joy Luck Club, called June by her American friends, states that the way she and her mother speak, “ made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese” (Tan 12). June and her mother literally speak two separate languages, and with this occurring, a common point of view can never be reached. June appears Chinese, however because she was raised in America and speaks English, it is very difficult for her to see, or even understand what her mother, Suyuan, is trying to explain to her. Without this common understanding Suyuan loses the ability to convey her culture to her own daughter. Just like June and Suyuan, Rukmani’s children also find it difficult to see the world from the point of view of their mother. Rukmani’s dilemma may not posses a language barrier like Suyuan’s, yet Rukmani and her children still fail to see eye to eye especially when her children abandon and forsake their parents wishes. The generation gap outlined in both novels shows the increasingly large ravine

These fictional narratives both use their characters’ struggles to embody the very real historical issue of culture loss. In both The Joy Luck Club and Nectar in a Sieve, the younger more naive generations lose their cultural roots, disconnect from their families and destroy the culture that they are responsible for continuing. Without the next generation knowing their cultural roots the metaphorical tree that is the culture that their ancestors have gone through so much to protect and continue through their children, is bound to